Abstract
BackgroundThe objective of this study is the evaluation of the Masaoka-Koga and the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC)/International Thymic Malignancy Interest Group (ITMIG) proposal for the new TNM-staging system on clinical implementation and prognosis of thymic malignancies.MethodsA retrospective study of 76 patients who underwent surgery between January 2005 and December 2015 for thymoma. Kaplan–Meier survival analysis was used to determine overall and recurrence-free survival rates.ResultsIndication for surgery was primary mediastinal tumor (n = 55), pleural manifestation (n = 17), or mediastinal recurrence (n = 4) after surgery for thymoma. Early Masaoka-Koga stages I (n = 9) and II (n = 14) shifted to the new stage I (n = 23). Advanced stages III (Masaoka-Koga: n = 20; ITMIG/IASLC: n = 17) and IV (Masaoka-Koga: n = 33; ITMIG/IASLC: n = 35) remained nearly similar and were associated with higher levels of WHO stages. Within each staging system, the survival curves differed significantly with the best 5-year survival in early stages I and II (91%). Survival for stage IV (70 to 77%) was significantly better compared to stage III (49 to 54%). Early stages had a significant longer recurrence-free survival (86 to 90%) than advanced stages III and IV (55 to 56%).ConclusionsThe proportion of patients with IASLC/ITMIG stage I increased remarkably, whereas the distribution in advanced stages III and IV was nearly similar. The new TNM-staging system presents a clinically useful and applicable system, which can be used for indication, stage-adapted therapy, and prediction of prognosis for overall and recurrence-free survival.
Highlights
The objective of this study is the evaluation of the Masaoka-Koga and the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC)/International Thymic Malignancy Interest Group (ITMIG) proposal for the new TNM-staging system on clinical implementation and prognosis of thymic malignancies
Main objective of therapy in all stages of thymoma and thymic carcinoma should be complete surgical resection based on a stage-adapted treatment including multimodality therapy in advanced stages [1,2,3]
Prognosis depends on the preoperative tumor stage mainly characterized by the anatomical extend (Masaoka-Koga classification), the World Health Organization (WHO) histological classification system, and the completeness of surgical resection [4,5,6,7,8]
Summary
The objective of this study is the evaluation of the Masaoka-Koga and the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC)/International Thymic Malignancy Interest Group (ITMIG) proposal for the new TNM-staging system on clinical implementation and prognosis of thymic malignancies. Prognosis depends on the preoperative tumor stage mainly characterized by the anatomical extend (Masaoka-Koga classification), the World Health Organization (WHO) histological classification system, and the completeness of surgical resection [4,5,6,7,8]. At least 15 different stage classification systems for thymic tumors have been proposed and implemented in the last decades [9]. The International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) and the International Thymic Malignancy Interest Group (ITMIG) have proposed a new classification for thymic malignancies [11, 12]. The IACLC/ITMIG staging system has been approved by the Union for the International Cancer Control (UICC) and the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) in the eight edition of the TNM classification [13, 14]
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